Data Architect - Senior (Remote) JP869

Project Name:
OPGT Public Trustee Information System Replacement
Scope:
GoA's Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee (OPGT) provides services for personal/financial matters to vulnerable Albertans. Financial services use comprehensive case management and financial systems for trust administration. This project replaces their legacy system with Microsoft Dynamics' Customer Relationship Management and Financial components.
System development is underway by an external vendor with go-live in late 2026. Agile sprint development is in place with a waterfall timeline for full release of the solution. The delivery team is supported by a GoA team (Manager, Product Owner, Change Manager/Trainer, Data Migration Team, Testers), vendor development team, and Technology and Innovation's (T&I) technical/privacy/security teams, and business stakeholders/SMEs.
The Data Architect is critical in defining, executing and managing data architecture domain to ensure project, security, technical and strategic objectives are met. The role provides leadership and expertise across architecture design, governance, security, and modernization—ensuring alignment with GoA standards and business needs.
Working closely with stakeholders, the role leads design/development of overarching data requirements and establishes principles, strategies, architectures, methods, models, standards and plans needed to provision data for the solution. They will establish a secure, high performing, analytics ready data architecture that supports operations, enterprise reporting and advanced analytics.
OPGT: https://www.alberta.ca/office-public-guardian-trustee.aspx
Duties:
This role provides architectural and technical expertise, leadership and data management services to ensure data quality, security, effectiveness and value.
Responsibilities include but are not limited to:
Architecture Leadership
Define/document data architecture (data requirements, strategies/plans, architecture, design principles, models, integration diagrams etc.)
Lead solution architecture and design on cloud and key data platforms. Ensure alignment with business requirements
Lead design and governance of schemas, tables, relationships, security roles and data access patterns
Promote data models and practices to reduce redundancy
Guide platform/infrastructure teams to configure data platform services to meet solution requirements.
Participate in planning on implementation strategy, technology stack, design patterns and process
Advise on configuration vs customization to support long term sustainability
Review/approve vendor delivered data designs, strategies and implementations
Advise and coach teams throughout project. Provide knowledge transfer

Enterprise Data Architecture
Define end to end data architecture, including all integrated applications and systems; develop conceptual, logical and data models aligned with platform standards, enterprise data policies, including Dataverse data modeling
Ensure architectural alignment across system modules, integrated applications, Power Platform components, Azure and downstream reporting environments
Establish data architecture principles and standards consistent with GoA architecture frameworks
Architect integrations between solution and external systems, including legacy platforms, document repositories, etc
Ensure data exchanges meet security, privacy and auditability standards
Work with Microsoft Dynamics to design how data is organized, stored, integrated and managed across Dynamics 365 ecosystem and broader Microsoft cloud environment (Power Platform, Azure, Fabric)
Work with Microsoft Dynamics' Finance & Operations for managing financial data

Data Migration
Serve as GoA lead in data mapping from legacy platform to the new application, ensuring accurate lineage, transformations and alignment with new data models
Collaborate with vendor to validate mapping logic, support build activities, and ensure mappings are technically feasible
Work with business areas to define/confirm data rules, resolve data gaps, and ensure mappings support functional, operational, and reporting needs
Lead data migration strategy. Define extraction, transformation, cleansing, and validation approaches aligned with business rules. Ensure data integrity, traceability, and reconciliation throughout migration activities
Support parallel-run and cutover strategies to minimize business disruption

Data Lakehouse – Architecture & Design
Define data warehouse/lakehouse approach and architecture and related requirements
Define storage, archival and retrieval approach for legacy data and target data structures and storage solutions for new system data to ensure performance and long term maintainability
Use Microsoft tools to create a modern data warehouse/lakehouse (e.g. Azure Services - Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure Synapse Analytics and Azure Databricks for big data processing, analytics, data warehousing)
Design data mesh/lakehouse architectures using Microsoft Azure technology stack to unify data management and analytics.

Data Quality & Readiness
Define data quality standards, validation rules and acceptance criteria for migrated and operational data
Support business validation activities, including sampling, reconciliation and exception management
Ensure data readiness across project stages (e.g. user acceptance testing, training, go-live)
Identify and mitigate data-related risks early

Data Governance & Compliance
Ensure compliance with GoA policies - privacy, records management, data retention, access control, etc
Define and enforce data classification, retention schedules, and information lifecycle management within platform and integrated platforms
Collaborate with security, privacy, records management teams to implement data governance practices/controls. Support audits, compliance reviews, architectural assurance processes

Reporting
Ensure new solution and data architecture enable effective reporting/analytics, including in solution dashboards and Power BI reports
Define data flows into reporting platforms and downstream analytics environments
Ensure consistency between operational and analytical data models
Ensure architecture security, enforcing data/reports are only accessible to certain individuals/groups
Implement anonymization, restricting access to sensitive data from certain individuals/groups

Delivery Oversight
Oversight across Agile delivery cycles, ensuring data considerations are embedded early in design and backlog refinement
Participate in sprint planning, backlog grooming and design reviews from an architecture perspective
Identify dependencies, risks, constraints impacting timelines. Support realistic sequencing/release planning for data-related work
Develop project plans/schedules and estimates for data activities. Develop task lists and resource assignments to ensure completion of data activities

Vendor & Stakeholder Collaboration
Collaborate/consult effectively with project stakeholders. Review vendor deliverables for compliance/quality
Translate technical data concepts, risks, options and recommendations into clear, actionable guidance for business stakeholders. Provide strategic guidance. Support executive decision-making
Document technical recommendations